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Lost in Space
1/2
Cinema
Releases - July 31,
1998
Rated on a 4-star
scale. USA. Directed by Stephen Hopkins. Written by Avika Goldsman.
Starring Matt LeBlanc, Gary
Oldman, William Hurt, Jack Johnson, Mimi Rogers, Heather Graham, Lacey
Chabert.
"Danger, Will Robinson!" scream the ads for Stephen
Hopkins's "Lost In Space", and the danger referred to has got
to be that the film is already a contender for being the worst movie of the
year. This is as bad as it gets, even worse than Costa-Gavras's "Mad City".
At least "Mad City" made clear what was going on, however annoying that was.
And it was also worthy of my passionate hatred, making me tear my hair out
and go red in the face, whereas "Lost In Space" was so empty and dead I just
sat in appalled silence.
What is the plot? Some readers may not care, for
they have either come to the (correct) conclusion that the film is not worth
seeing, they want to see it simply for the special effects, or they just
want to see how the TV show has been adapted. Some may want to know the plot,
though. I'm guessing that's if I have anybody reading who is one of those
sad undesirables who memorised the names of all the creatures in the "Star
Wars" films, writes essays about the plot holes in the sci-fi films of James
Cameron, thinks gore films are exciting, and travels all around the country
every week because they can't miss a single comic mart. They will no doubt
become obsessed with "Lost In Space", see it numerous times, buy as much
memorabilia as they can find on it and memorise every detail. If I have any
of those anoraks reading, please may I tell them that they probably have
already read all they can find on the film, and so do not need me to tell
them the plot. Aside from that, I haven't got much of a clue what it is.
I lost track less than fifteen minutes into the picture, and since I don't
remember the TV show at all, that left me pretty bewildered. I know that
I am far more intelligent than the script, and for that matter so is Forrest
Gump, but it still managed to confuse me. The main reason for this, I guess,
is that the lines are so ridiculously awful, and presented so sincerely,
that I was concentrating on their lack of quality rather than their meaning.
From what I managed to gather, although it's probably wrong... The Robinsons
are a family in the future, who are sent, for some strange reason, to install
some sort of "gate" on a planet ten years of space travel away. A "hyperdrive"
will allow people on Earth to travel to this gate instantly, and live on
the planet, since the Earth will be unhabitable in 20 years. Something happens
that causes the Robinson ship to be in danger, and they have to use the
hyperdrive to skidaddle. Unfortunately for them, when the hyperdrive is used
without a gate to travel to, it can send a ship into any point in the galaxy
it's travelling in. For the rest of the movie, the Robinsons seem to be trying
to figure out where they are. Robinsons, stranded, get it? Ho, ho,
ho.
The action sequence that causes the ship to be
in danger is one of the many unfathomable action sequences in "Lost In Space".
They are unfathomable in two ways -- firsty, they have no motivation or cause
that I could make out, and secondly, I simply couldn't tell what was supposed
to be happening in them. They all seem to be performed in the shoddiest manner,
by the shaking of a set and the throwing around of a few flourescent sparks.
A dumb summer action flick is really in trouble when even the action doesn't
impress. And a filmmaker is in bigger trouble when even his credit sequence
is worthy of a Golden Raspberry Award -- not only are they in a stupid order
-- the writing credit before the cast, for example, but the title appears
two or three different times and the accompanying music is dreadfully
inappropriate. And although the film often looks wonderful, with cinematography
reminiscent of 1982's dazzling "Tron", its looking the same all the time
doesn't work. Since the storytelling wasn't good enough to separate scene
from scene, and not make it seem like people were casually strolling through
parts of the ship, time zones and galaxies, the look should have done something
to help. Sadly, it was not to be.
Even more sadly, the film was to be.
Although it is full of sound and fury, it is incredibly dull, and I'm seriously
considering if it is a tale told by an idiot. Although screenwriter Avika
Goldsman has the pretty good "The Client" and "A Time To Kill" on her
filmography, she's got more titles like "Batman Forever" there. The dialogue
is more ludicrous than that of 1950s B-movies or the thousands of pathetic
unproduced sci-fi scripts that, like this film, should be burnt if it weren't
damaging to the environment. "Lost In Space" was so uninvolving that I felt
I had to take notes to be able to write a full-length review. Only at the
start of writing this piece, and typing out the cast list, did I realise
the names of most of the characters and that Heather Graham's character was
supposed to be the daughter of William Hurt's (the scene in which she says
so plays like she's kidding).
What I did catch of the plot and characters, by
the way, didn't make much sense. The villain, played by Gary Oldman, is a
shoddy attempt at the intelligent European slimeball, a cliche handled with
skill by films like "Die Hard", but here just given a lot of long words and
nonsenical bullshit to say. Hurt says to Matt Le Blanc's character at one
point that he can't fly his ship, even though the opening scene stated that
a baby could do so. A late subplot involving time travel is paradoxical if
we buy earlier logic of the film about the uses of time travel. And if I
followed it correctly, what the characters decide to do in the very last
scene is exactly what got them lost in the first place.
We are also treated to... The company of an alien
animal taken in by the Robinson family, which is generated with such abysmal
special effects that it looks like something out of a Coco Pops commercial.
Another rehash of the recent trend for kids in action movies to be a pair
consisting of a nerdy computer whiz-kid little brother and a sarcastic wimp
older sister. The film expecting us to take seriously a constipated-looking
friend of Le Blanc's who sounds like Harvey Fierstein in a pantomime. A robot
which Will trains blubberingly, and illogically, makes friends with him in
the worst scene of the whole piece, not least since it sounds like a cross
between David Hasselhoff and Stephen Hawking's computer.
Before seeing "Lost In Space" I saw "Wild Things",
a film which hams everything up as much as it can and is still not as corny
as this. That was an enjoyable film, might I add, because it obviously got
the joke. Its performance from Neve Campbell, who still has everything to
prove due to some terrible work, was very impressive, but as for "Lost In
Space", I don't know how talented actors got involved with the garbage. There's
William Hurt, Gary Oldman, Mimi Rogers and Heather Graham. And while we're
on the subject of the cast, no, it was not amusing to see another
"Friends" cast member on the big screen. Granted, Jennifer Aniston is a good
film actress, but Le Blanc did not do anything interesting here, and Courteney
Cox has not made anything post-"Friends" that I have seen that is above her
previous standard of straight-to-cable trash.
This film is an embarrassment to the planet. It
is shockingly awful. It is released on July 31, in the middle of the summer
blockbuster season, and was already a hit in the U.S., but if you go and
see it, you should be ashamed of yourself. Audiences are made up of individuals,
and so if you let your cash go into the pockets of the people who made this
film, you can consider yourself the direct cause of Hollywood getting lazy
enough to make it.
COPYRIGHT©
1998 Ian Waldron-Mantgani
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